So my wife has been eyein a new/nicer camera for quite a long time but we haven't been able to drop the coin on one yet. Her birthday is in about a month and I'd really like to find her a complete setup. I'm leaning towards going used as 500.00 is about my tap out point. She'd like to make photography an invested hobby but as of now the camera would mostly be used for family type settings (she posts pics on a few blogs regularly) and my kids are getting into their grade school years and are pretty active in different sports/dance activities.

I know almost nothing about what's out there other than I see a lot about the Nikons in this forum. Quality, ease of use, and longevity are probably my biggest wants at this point, but as I said I'm uninformed.

Any recommendations/information from you guys would be awesome and a great help. Here's a few postings from a local classifieds that i was interested in. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the heads up on the 20D and that website Randy. I was able to find some shots taken with that camera and was pretty impressed. I think I've narrowed it down to the Canon 20D and the Nikon D60 - mostly because of the accessibility. Of the two, what do you think the better offering is and how important is it to have a second lens when getting started?

Keith, I own a 20D, it's a wonderful camera, but the tech is 7 years old. I would wholly recommend one of the newer rebels or Nikon equivalents. If your wife has never used a dlsr before, she will most likely find the smaller form factor more to her liking, and the rebels are geared towards newcomers, they are generally simpler to operate. Is this going to be a suprise? if not do yourself a favor and go to a camera store and have her play with various models and see what she likes. then look for it or an older model used.